fire

They're used to fire on Top Chef, but not like this. A battery on a camera exploded as they were setting up to do a shot for the Bravo show, and luckily for us the whole thing was captured by another camera.

It's weird to look back at the Michael Jackson Pepsi ad from 1984 (the one that actually aired) and think that it caused so many problems in his life. US Weekly got hold of the footage that never aired, of Jackson's scalp catching on fire, causing second and third degree burns to his scalp and face. The magazine claims that this accident is what led to MJ's addiction to both painkillers and plastic surgery.

This is surreal footage, and at first I thought it was footage from the TV movie made about Jackson's life, but it's real. That's Miko Brando in the hat helping Jackson. Brando has been on Larry King Live many times recently. After the jump, the ad that aired. It's worth noting that Jackson went on to do other Pepsi ads after this.

Back in 1984, Michael Jackson was filming a TV commercial for Pepsi and got severely injured when his hair caught fire from a special effects explosion. I'm assuming that the finished commercial has a body double during that scene (or they used footage from another take), though Michael can be seen in other parts of the commercial with his brothers. Some people close to Jackson say that he started taking painkillers after this incident. (Here's footage of Jackson after it happened.)

This is pretty cool, especially since you don't usually get to see or read about stuff like this until you're watching a featurette on a DVD set.

For those that didn't catch last night's episode of Rescue Me ("Disease," S05E12), the opening scene featured a very cool fire sequence in which Tommy, Franco, Black Shawn, and Mike had to escape a burning apartment hallway. The entire sequence was eerily cut to the high-pitched vocals of Duffy and her song "Syrup & Honey," but what came across as most impressive was how real it all looked.

For week two of Celebrity Circus, ex-Brady Buncher Christopher Knight will set himself ablaze as he performs "fire clowning." I wonder how Adrienne Curry feels about this. It's got to raise some suspicions about your husband's sanity if he's willing to set himself on fire for reality TV.

Here's some of the other stupid things the celebs will be doing this week on the show:

Wee Manbattling the German Wheel, the same act in which Knight broke his arm. Wee Man will be paired with trainer Vladimir Sizov for a synchronized act. Stacey Dash will perform on the Cerceau alongside trainer Sacha Fedorchev. Dash will be creating a sexy and high-energy routine flying 50 feet above the ground with no safety line or harness. Antonio Sabato Jr. will push himself to the limit doing a hand-balancing act with his partner and trainer Christine Van Loo. There will be no room for errors as any little mistake could lead to serious injury.

The courthouse set used in Back to the Future (and dozens of other films, including To Kill A Mockingbird) was destroyed, and the clock tower building seen in BTTF was heavily damaged. A set used as a New York City street (seen in everything from the first Dirty Harry film to Seinfeld) was destroyed, as was a set used as a New England street. The King Kong exhibit was destroyed as were many videos in the vault (luckily there are backups for those).

400 firefighters were involved in fighting the blaze, and the cause is still under investigation. The studio/theme park opened for business this morning.

A giant fire broke out at Universal Studios in Los Angeles early this morning, destroying the courthouse square from the Back to the Future movies and damaging the famous clock tower. The King Kong attraction was destroyed, along with over 40,000 videos that were housed in a vault, including footage from I Love Lucy and Miami Vice. Not sure why videos aren't stored in a fireproof vault, maybe underground or some other safe area, but luckily there are copies of the videos in another office.

There have also been a few sets that have been destroyed, including fake New York City and New England street sets that have been used in various TV shows, commercials, and movies. No word on how the fire started but officials say that it has now been contained. One firefighter and two other have been hurt (the latter in an explosion at the vault after the fire was out), but the MTV Movie Awards will go on as scheduled tonight.

I've been watching a lot of early Simpsons episodes lately, mostly from the first five seasons. I know many fans cite the earlier seasons as the best of the series, but I tend to disagree with the notion that the show was only good up to a point and all subsequent seasons are a complete waste. It's easy to say "everything after season six is crap," but you're disregarding A LOT of episodes when you make a statement like that. I try to judge each episode on its own merit, regardless of the season.

It's certainly not wrong to prefer some seasons to others, as humor is always subjective, and, in the case of The Simpsons, I think there are numerous variables that come into play as to why some still love it and some abhor it. I won't go into that here, though.

Our corporate cousins at TMZ.com are reporting that the Malibu home of Suzanne Somers was destroyed by a fire today. The fire swept through a number of beachfront properties in the tony California town; the site also confirms that the home of Susan Anton was also destroyed.

Other people who live in the Malibu Colony area, where the fire is occurring, are Mel Gibson, Pierce Brosnan, Pamela Anderson, Barbra Streisand, Ted Danson, David Geffen and Courtney Cox-Arquette. What I find interesting is how often brush fires, mudslides, and other disasters destroy houses out there in Malibu. Is living on the beach worth the headaches that seem to happen year after year over there? I don't know who's more of a masochist; the people who don't move out of a flood plain or people who pay millions of dollars for houses built on a beach. I think it's a tie.

Every single thing that gets aired on television is also beamed into space. It's not instant; the transmissions are limited by the speed of light (which means the aliens living on Wolf 424 are just now getting to watch the first season of Hanging with Mr. Cooper), but they're out there and there's no taking them back.

It's odd to consider, but it's true: what we air on TV is our first introduction to the universe. If aliens do exist and they decide to study Earth, the first thing they'll probably look at is our TV broadcasts. Later on this week, I'll be writing about the five worst shows to represent humanity (a lot of them are on MTV), but I wanted to introduce the topic today because I just can't stop thinking about what aliens might think regarding our curious habit of airing a few hours of a burning log every Christmas.

Evangeline Lilly's rental home is a total loss. A fire gutted her home early Wednesday morning in Kailua, Hawaii. Luckily, neither Evangeline nor her two roommates were at home. Evangeline was already on the set for her last day of shooting Lost before the Christmas break.

According to newspaper reports in Hawaii, neighbors heard "electrical popping sounds" just before seven this morning. Then they saw flames and the fire quickly engulfed the entire house before firefighters arrived. One neighbor even rushed into the house to see if anyone was inside, but was pushed back by black smoke (the black smoke?).

That just plain sucks. I hope A) she had insurance and B) she didn't lose anything important. I'm sure people in Hawaii are lining up to offer her a place to sleep!

(S01E12) We're back to the Monster of the Week episodes and this one's a doozy. This time the perp is a pyromaniac who can start fires with his mind or something. That's bad news for Mulder who is deathly afraid, of all things, fire. Oh, and Mulder's investigating the case with his ex-girlfriend (Phoebe) from Oxford.

The episode opens in England with a gardener smiling as his boss suddenly explodes into flames and dies on his front lawn. The next time we see the gardener, he has dropped his accent and is posing as a caretaker for an American home where a British family is moving in. He really hates the British aristocracy.

Homer (talking about his father): He said I was an accident. He didn't want to have me.

Marge:You didn't want to have Bart.

Homer:I know, but you're never supposed to tell the child.

Marge:You tell Bart all the time. You told him this morning.

Homer:But when I do it it's cute.

I don't think I would want to see Abe "Grandpa" Simpson made the center of every episode, but I like it when they occasionally give his character a little more dimension than just being a simple satire of elderly people. "The Curse of the Flying Hellfish" is a great example of such an episode, but this one isn't too bad, either, and it gives ol' Grandpa a chance to venture outside the rest home and actually do something.

(S05E04) In this episode, Monk must investigate a murder by arson, despite being blinded by the man who committed the crime.

While visiting the local fire station to have his thirty smoke alarms tested, a man from the street walks in. The fire chief tells the man he's not supposed to be there, and then he tries to apprehend him, the man beans the fire chief with a shovel and throws liquid solvent into Monk's eyes, blinding him. The doctor tells Monk it's uncertain whether or not his eyesight will return, and Monk's colleagues do their best to help him out. Disher tries to help out, too, though his idea of helping is to explain everything he's doing, whether it's relevant or not. There's a funny scene later in the episode when Disher is looking for his notebook and tells Monk which pockets he's looking in, as if that even matters. I also laughed when he tells Monk he's going to work 24/7 to figure out who blinded him, except for May 11 because that's when his niece is getting confirmed.

(S04E03) Typically, an episode of Reno 911! will have some semblance of a plot, but the bulk of the episode will be random scenes involving the officers. This particular episode actually stuck with its main plot of the officers discovering a jet ski once owned by a deceased officer, and only veered from that plot a couple of times.

One of the best "extra" scenes involved Trudi going to Lamaze class, once again with Paul Rudd playing the instructor. The two become rather cozy in front of the class, with Rudd's character showing Trudi the proper way to massage her breasts to get them to produce milk, and ending with her bent over and him behind her for some inexplicable reason. I'm not positive, but I think right before the scene changes you can see Rudd actually starting to crack up. That's actually one of many great things about this show being completely improvised; if you watch closely there are a lot of scenes where someone begins to lose it. Pay close attention to Tom Lennon whenever they do their PSAs, because he's almost always on the verge of completely cracking up.